


This Is Not Ages

by deathtodickens



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:32:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathtodickens/pseuds/deathtodickens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short break from Ages to work through some things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not Ages

She used to be happy, whoever she was back then. I would see her on occasion, with her daughter on her hip, with a smile on her face.  She used to be so happy, if that smile had been any indication.

He would come home to them, wrap her up in his arms.  Wrap their daughter up in those arms, too.  And I remember the laughter from that little one, bubbling up and out, loud and infectious. I remember that little one’s laugh as though she’d grown up laughing at my own jokes because that’s just how close our houses had always been. That’s how far away they never really were.

I still hear that laughter echoing in through my windows. Into my home now.  That laughter is haunting. The smile that laughter’s mother used to smile is haunting.

The look of grief that plagues that little laughter’s mother’s expression is haunting, too.

***

She is slight and even too much of that.  She is short, too, but that just cannot be helped.  

She is a small figure that tries, or maybe there is no effort at all, to make herself even smaller. To fold up and in, to disappear and hide. To be nothing at all.

I remember the way she used to speak before. Full of life, excitement.  As if talking to anyone at all who was not her husband or her daughter had been the absolute thrill of her lifetime.

I remember wanting to ask her how.  How she had come so far away from home, because she had clearly come quite far, only to be a prisoner in this town, in her own house. A wife to her husband, a mother to her daughter.  A woman who rarely leaves a house, in a town where women, who travel as far as she clearly had, was practically unheard of.

I remember wanting to ask her why but knowing, the way she reached for her child and held her close and pressed tiny kisses into tiny cheeks amidst laughter that was not tiny at all… I remember knowing that was the answer.

Her child had been the thing to keep her here. Whether by choice or want, by need or demand. She was here for that little girl.

She is still here, though I imagine it is by only one small and fraying thread that she is still here. If not by magic or miracle or need to stay.

She is barely more than a shadow on my doorstep, a sliver of the presence she used to be. She is the hollow shell of a woman who had once had purpose, who was now lost and wandering and betrayed by her own grief.

She used to be so happy, and it isn’t until she speaks that I know exactly how far away from happy she has come. Only to find her way here.

***

She’s never been in my house before and we have been neighbors for three years.

There had been the occasional conversation out front, whenever we’d been drawn that way.  Whenever our paths would happen to cross.  

There had been neighborly waves, from both her and her husband.  Eventually there had been tiny neighborly waves from a growing child, too.

There had been holiday cards slipped into mailboxes when the other hadn’t been home. Or if either of us had been home, neither stayed long enough to find out.  

This past year there had been a tiny jar of rainbow sprinkles on the porch, a handwritten note attached. An  invitation to witness a certain little someone turning a very certain three years old. The promise of my very own cupcake to decorate upon my arrival.

Upon what I’m sure would also be the arrival of far too many other small children.

“As it happens,” I’d once told an almost-three year old’s mother, “it is also my nephew’s birthday. I won’t be in town,” but I had thanked her for the invitation, accepted her offer to stop by for tea sometime.

I’d once left a brand new set of large wooden blocks on her porch in return. I had never before wrapped a gift so meticulously. There had been perfect brown paper edges, twine twirled with blue and purple ribbon, and the closest thing to calligraphy I will ever know. Rainbow sprinkles set in glue spelled out “Christina” and below that, with pen because sprinkles could only go so far, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.”

There hadn’t been enough time, after that, to find out if she ever actually got those blocks, liked those blocks. If she ever had the chance to play with those blocks at all.

***

“There were ants.”

It has been months. It has felt like years.

The sound of her voice, in this way, is jarring.  The steadiness, the calm. I have a memory of this voice like this. Not screaming, not breaking. Not sobbing and shouting and begging time and space and fate to undo what it does to whoever it chooses.  However it chooses.

That memory is distant. It is a distant memory, long overshadowed by the one that dominates every thought I have of her.  This woman. Her daughter. My neighbor.

She used to be so happy.

“On the porch just now, as I was returning, there were ants,” and that is all it takes for that voice to break. For the familiar sound of her unable to speak or speaking only through tears to hit me again. It is a rock, this memory. It is a crushing bolder. And if it is that much to me, the trigger in her voice to those so many months ago, those seemingly years ago, I cannot even begin to imagine what it is to her.

She, who used to be so happy.

She, who lost her only child.

***

We are quiet.

We are sat in my living room across from one another on the couch and she looks even smaller than usual amidst the large cushions, sinking further into that corner, taking slow sips from the cup of water in her hands before she finds herself not knowing what to do with that cup.

I take it from her and when our hands touch, when my fingers brush over hers, I feel the chill. She is cold. She is absolutely freezing. And it is only now, as I set the cup aside and turn my attention back to her, that I see her shiver.

“I can make tea.” It’s the only thing I can think to offer her.

“Please, don’t trouble yourself.”

“It’s no trouble.”

She seems to lack the words, the want, the will to argue. She nods only slightly and I am already standing, already heading into the kitchen.

It is as I’m setting the electric kettle to boil that she appears in the kitchen, just behind me, and seems to find all of the words she meant to say upon her arrival.

“Christina’s birthday, the present,” she says and it is soft again, that voice, but no longer steady. Not quite as calm. But she smiles as she looks away from me and to a thought that she alone can see. “You left it on the porch. It was covered in ants by the time we saw it.  The sprinkles–”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, please,” she says, eyes finding mine again, raising a hand and waving away my apology, “please don’t apologize. She… loved it.  Christina, she… she thrived in nature, the outdoors. Any and all insects, spiders especially, she loved to watch them.  See what they were in to.”

I nod. It’s all I have.

“The ants, she loved them as much as she did the blocks. I think she thought they were part of her gift,” and a soft laugh follows but it is a laugh that is almost a cry, a smile that gives way to furrowing brows, a huff of frustration.

The kettle is done before either of us find any more to say and it is her who speaks first again, as I pull two mugs from the cupboard.  It’s better this way, I think. That she lead the conversation. That she say what she wants to say, whatever she came here to say.

“So, you see, the ants… they reminded me to say thank you.  For the gift,” she sighs, “I don’t think I ever had.”

“You do not need to thank me for anything,” I tell her, as softly as I can while preparing her tea, “with everything that happened, Helena–”

“But I do,” she nods and steps closer.  I hold out a mug for her and she stops just before it, looks down at it curiously, back up at me with a face I cannot read.  I don’t know her well enough to know what that expression means, other than to know it looks pained and sad and so very much alone. But there is something else there she isn’t saying.  Something she must want to know… something she must want to ask.

After some time she reaches for the mug still in my hands.  With two hands cradling the sides of that mug, she reaches and, at first, it is just the tips of her fingers that catch my knuckles as she wraps them around that mug.  But then it is her whole hand, moving slowly over mine, fingers sliding to my wrist and around it, grasping tightly.

“Thank you,” she says this softly when our eyes meet again and the look I give her must not be the look she expects to receive because she immediately lowers her eyes, looks away, pulls her hand away, too.  "I’m sorry, I just…“ Then she is turning away, setting that mug down on the counter, apologizing, walking swiftly out of the kitchen.

She is headed straight for the door.

***

She can’t manage the locks.  Not before I catch her arm.  She is trying and she is crying, frustrated and swearing.  I tell her, "I want to help you,” and she stops fighting the door, stops trying to get away.  She lowers her head and shakes it and brings her hands up, to cover her face, and cries even more.  "I want to help you, Helena, but you have to tell me how I can do that because I don’t know what you need.  I can’t read your mind.“

"You don’t have to do anything for me,” she can barely manage to say, “I shouldn’t have come here.  You don’t even… you don’t even know me.  I don’t even know you.  You’re just,” and finally she looks up at me, “you’re just my neighbor.”  She laughs at herself now, disbelieving, rolling her eyes, wiping away tears, “You didn’t ask for any of this–”

“I will never be able,” I interrupt her, allowing my hand to fall to my side now, “to forget the sound of you screaming,” and I have to look away.  The way she looks at me, with those sad eyes and tears falling down cheeks, breaks my heart… takes me back.  To that day and that night.  A nightmare that I could at least distance myself from, even if that distance was not much at all.  

A nightmare that she will live for the rest of her life.  

“I will never not hear you screaming over your little girl.  I will never not see her–”

“He blames me,” she says quickly and I lift my eyes to hers again to find her nodding, as if this is acceptable, “for Christina’s death.”

“Your husband?”

She nods and closes her eyes, shaking her head, “I should have double checked the locks.  I should have known it was too quiet. That she was out front–”

“The only person responsible for her death is the drunk asshole who hit her, Helena.  She was nowhere near the street.  I saw her, Helena.  Even if you had been there…”

She is shaking her head, covering her face with arms, crumbling forward, breaking down.  I narrowly catch her as she falls and when she does, I fall, too.  My knees, already bruised and frail and beaten from my day to day, take the weight of our fall.

“I should have been there.”

“Even if you had been there.”

It is nothing, that pain. Compared to this? Compared to hers?  It is absolutely nothing.

***

“I tried to be there.”

She is on the couch now.  She is sitting straight and sipping warm tea, cradled between palms. She is staring straight ahead at the television that isn’t on.  She is speaking softly for the first time in twenty minutes.

I remain quiet. I let her talk. She needs it, I think. I think talking is what she came for.

“I was too late,” she sighs and closes her eyes and tears slip down her cheeks. And I know she is seeing it all over again. I am seeing her all over again. The car swerving, losing control, flipping. Christina still smiling, twirling, laughing. That laughter’s mother yelling, screaming, lunging.

She was seconds too late but even if she had been on time, even if she had reached Christina, there’s no way she would have survived.  They would both be lost.

The car was too fast. The crash too sudden.

That laughter was gone before her mother could ever finish screaming her name.

They would both be lost if Helena had been seconds earlier but perhaps that is the thing she longs for the most.

***

“You’re an architect,” she says. Her tears are still falling. When she finally opens her eyes, when her eyes finally meet mine, I nod. Quietly. Silently. One single nod in affirmation and this brings a small smile to her lips.

The smile is gone before it ever fully forms but it was there, even if only for a second. It, at the very least, tried to be present.

“Christina loved the blocks,” and suddenly she is moving, leaning to the side, reaching into her back pocket with one hand now free from her mug.  She pulls out her phone, does whatever she’s doing with it, then stills.

The smile returns and it is no longer fleeting.  It is big and wide, it is proud and unrelenting.

She turns the screen of her phone to me and it is a photo of Christina. Of Christina with her blocks and they are stacked in a square around her. She is sat grinning in the center of that square and that smile she smiles, it is her mother’s smile. Big and wide, proud and unrelenting.

She is her mother.

I try to smile and I think it only half works. From the way that woman pulls her phone away and clicks the screen to darkness and tucks that phone beneath her leg, that smile only half works.

“Things had been building up between us, Nate and I.”  She says this softly before taking a sip of her tea and palming that mug tight with both hands again. “Things came… to a head… when he took the blocks down.”  

She lowers her head for only a moment before red eyes meet mine again.

“They’d been there, all this time.  In the living room.  I’ll spare you the details just to say I am back where I started, five years ago.”

I didn’t know her five years ago. I almost wish I had. I wish we’d had at least that much time together.

“Unmarried,” she shakes her head. “Grieving over a child I can’t have.”

***

“I don’t want this to come out wrong, Helena–”

“I’m sorry, I’m taking up your time.”

“I don’t mind. I just… I still don’t know what you need from me. What I can do for you. To help?”

“You’re helping by listening…. I guess that’s all that I needed.”

“I can make more tea.”

“I should let you go–”

“I can make it stronger…”

Helena stills in thought but it is less than five seconds of thought before she wordlessly reaches her mug across to me.

My only response to that is a small smile, complete understanding.

***

We are sat on the floor, side by side with a bottle of whiskey between us.

At some point, it no longer made sense to stand, to also walk the distance to the kitchen with two mugs, to refill those mugs with tea and whiskey and honey and sliced lemon.

At some point, it made since to abandon those mugs in favor of glasses. To abandon the lemon, the honey, and the tea.

At some point things turned from unbearable sadness into unbearable laughter.

That smile returns. I can see it in her eyes, too.

Big and wide. Proud and unrelenting.

Beautiful and intoxicating.

I am so intoxicated by her.

The whiskey, too, may have something to do with that.

***

“Thank you,” she tells me at the end of more laughter, at the beginning of a sigh.

“For what?” I am smiling and happy. I am shaking my head because she is ridiculous. I am leaning into her… I think she’s leaning into me, too. But I can’t be sure because there’s been a lot of whiskey.

A lot of things are beginning to lean.

“This,” she says, smile softening, “distraction. Conversation.”

“Ah,” I nod and shrug. “It was… a timely distraction for me, too. Actually.”

“Yeah?”

“I just… well,” I laugh and I roll my eyes and it’s awful. I feel awful. Because I’m flirting. And I know it. I am drunk and I am awful because I am flirting with a grieving mother. And she is drunk and she is anything but awful. She is so far away from awful that it only exacerbates my awful. Still my mouth continues to move. Still my voice continues to speak, “I should say I was just… recently found unfit for my girlfriend,” pause, rethink, reword, “ex-girlfriend’s, and I’m going to have to get used to that, plans for the future.”

“What?” Helena laughs and then she apologizes and then she says she doesn’t mean to laugh at me but she laughs more at how absurd this sounds. She says, “I find it difficult, extremely difficult, to imagine you not fitting into anyone’s life plans.”

Her voice is dripping with sarcasm, when she says life plans. She wants to know exactly what these life plans involve. Who is this woman behind this absurd thought? Why does she think she has it all figured out? How could she dare break up with me?

“You, Myka.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that difficult.”

“She’s an idiot. Whoever she is.”

“Abigail Cho.”

“The news anchor?”

I nod.

“Oh, she’s… wow, really?”

I continue to nod.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

For some stupid reason, after that, we can’t stop laughing.

***

The laughter stops.

It stops when she leans in, when it is definitely not just the whiskey leaning, when I may be leaning, too.

We are laughing and it is uncontrollable and delightful and the best thing I have felt in weeks, months because those thoughts of her? Screaming? Crying? Cradling a broken child? They are slowly being overshadowed by more laughter. By happiness. Even if it is temporary. Even if it isn’t all that happy to begin with.

Those screams pale in comparison to this laugh. Those cries pale against this smile.

But then that laughter stops and she’s leaning and I’m leaning and there is no warning, no hesitation.

Her lips are on mine, her hands are in my hair, her arms are pulling me forward, I am falling into her without a fight.

***

Whiskey and honey.

Her mouth is all whiskey. Her lips taste of honey. If this kiss is meant to be slow or soft or delicate, it is none of those things. Because whiskey and honey coated lips are desperately moving against mine, my lips are moving desperately against hers.

I’m awful, I tell myself again and again and again.

A grieving mother.

A grieving mother, separated from her husband.

Divorced?

She’s grieving.

I’m awful.

I am going to hell.

Can you go to hell for this?

I am going to hell anyway but I’m pretty sure this qualifies for a deeper level of hell. I’m pretty sure this qualifies for limbs eternally being ripped off in pits of fire levels of hell.

I don’t even believe in hell but if I did? This qualifies.  

“Stop thinking about it.”

“What?”

“Hell.”

I can’t even tell my brain from my mouth anymore.

“This is your brain,” she says raking fingers through my hair. I close my eyes at the sensation. I feel her breath, hot and bitter and sweet against my lips. “And this is your mouth.”

Whiskey and honey are my salvation.

***

“Help me.”

This is exactly what she came here for.

“Please.”

She expects it to be quick and dirty. Easy. Regrettable. Forgettable.

“I need to feel anything else…”

She expects to be able to stand up and walk away from everything. From that. From this.

“…anything that isn’t grief.”

She unbuttons and unzips her jeans and that is all.  She surges forward full of want, filled with need. And somewhere between her teeth sinking into my lips, between my fingers sinking in-between hers, I have decided that it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t mean anything, that it’s rushed, that this is all she wants, that this is what she needs? That she came to me for it?

Anything to erase those screams, the crying, the image of her holding her dying daughter.  Anything at all.

“Anything to erase the pain,” she echoes my thoughts, my actual thoughts. She’s crying.  "Anything… but especially you.“

***

She climbs. She comes. She falls exhausted and near motionless and crying against me.  We fall, together, into the couch.

She expects to walk away. She says, "This was supposed to be easy.” But she stays and she cries and it isn’t easy anymore. It isn’t quick and dirty. Forgettable. “This was supposed to be a mistake.”

My hand is on her cheek, I lift her face to mine. I kiss those lips both bitter and sweet.

“I’m sorry,” she cries at the end of that kiss. “I’m not… supposed to want this. I’m not supposed to drag you into my life.  I’m supposed to walk away. I’m supposed to… leave and–”

“Do you want me to kick you out?”

It makes her smile. It makes her laugh very softly, one exhausted puff of laughter that escapes her mouth and warms my cheek and precedes a kiss of her lips against mine.

“My bags are packed,” she sighs after that kiss. “They’re sat at my door.”

I reach up and run a hand through long hair, dark and brilliant and not one strand out of place.

“What time is your flight?” Because somehow it just makes sense. Somehow, this is just logical.

She sighs.

“Five hours.”

My hand still moving through her hair breaks up the lingering silence. Makes it tolerable. Enjoyable.

“Do you want me to kick you out?” I ask again.

Her eyelids fall heavy. She leans into the touch of my hand in her hair. She rests her forehead against my shoulder. She kisses my arm.

“I’m supposed to say yes,” she says softly but when she turns her head, to rest against my shoulder, she sighs, she presses her lips into my cheek, she shakes her head.  

“How about… I wake you up in three hours.”

“It’s a one-way flight.”

I smile and I turn and I kiss her. It is not quick, or dirty. It is sweet. It is slow.

I kiss her and when we part, I kiss her again and I tell her, in a whisper, because it is a secret she may not know, “Planes fly the other direction, too.” She smiles. She buries her face into my shoulder.  "If you ever feel ready… to come back.“

"A grieving mother,” her voice is muffled but she turns her head away from my shoulder now and her lips toward my ear, “is that all you see, when you see me?”

I see her with her eyes closed. I see her with furrowed brows, with a concentrated expression on her face. I see her moving rhythmically over my lap, against me. I see myself moving determinedly against her.

I see her pinned between myself and the cushion of the couch.  I see her wrapping her arms around me. Grasping. Holding on tight.

Her hands in my hair, her lips against my mouth. My hand around her waist, the other hand losing itself beyond an undone button, beyond unzipped jeans.

I see her face as she climbs. As she climaxes. As she falls.

I fall with her.

We fall together.

I see her wrapped in my arms, tears in her eyes, watching me expectantly. Asking me if a grieving mother is all I see when I look at her. Asking if pity and sorrow and these sad attempts at understanding, comprehending her pain is all I have to give her.

“It used to be all that I saw,” I see myself saying this to her, I hear these words escaping me through whiskey and honey, bitter and sweet, “whenever I closed my eyes.”

“And now?”

“If you ever feel ready,” I say, moving my forehead against hers, touching my nose to hers, brushing my lips across hers, “to come back?” I nod, I sigh, I kiss those lips, “I really hope you do.”

***

She goes because it would be ridiculous to stay.

I call up a cab for her. I help load her luggage into the car. I ride with her to the airport.

I remind myself how awful I am the entire way there.

I help bring her luggage inside. I learn more about her as she checks in for her flight than I have learned about her in the past three years.

“One-way ticket, connecting in New York, then on to London? Home?” The woman at the check in stand confirms.

Helena looks at me. For some reason she looks guilty. For some reason she looks sad.

“Yes,” she says softly, still watching me a moment longer before turning back to the woman at the counter, “that’s correct.”

“And are you also traveling today, Ma'am?”

“No,” I answer just as softly as Helena had. Her brows furrow at my response but she doesn’t turn to look at me again. She seems to make it a point not to.  So I reach for her hand. I expect her to pull away and if not that, I expect it to feel awkward.  I expect it to be weird.

She doesn’t pull away. It doesn’t feel awkward or weird.  It feels… inadequate.  Not enough.

She sighs and she tilts her head to the side but she doesn’t pull away. She moves her hand further into my hold. She interlocks her fingers with mine.

“Just seeing her off,” I add.

She looks at me then. Unsmiling. She looks and she leans and when her body comes to rest against mine, when she leans fully into me, I kiss her forehead. Her eyebrow. The bridge of her nose.

***

She is checked in. Her luggage checked, too. She is a vision of exhaustion and half-open eyes, hair pulled back into a quick ponytail that still manages perfection.

She has one bag on her shoulder, her arms are crossed in front of her.  We are lingering just outside of the security check point. She keeps staring at it, she keeps staring back at me.

“You have twenty minutes before boarding,” I remind her.

She closes her eyes and shakes her head.

“Will you forgive me?”

“For what?”

She opens her eyes and they are glistening.

“For running away,” she sighs with another shake of her head, “for… planning it this way.  It’s just that… I think a lot about the way you helped me, after Christina. You didn’t even really know me but you stayed with me… you held me. At the hospital… you came to her funeral… when Nate just…” She shakes this off, too. “I have thought a lot about you since then and I wanted to feel that again. I needed to but I didn’t think it would feel like this… like…”

I pull her into my arms and she cries. I wrap my arms tight around her and she sobs.

“I’m sorry, Myka.”

I press a kiss into her hair. Another against her temple.

“You don’t owe me any apologies,” I whisper in her ear. “You don’t owe me anything, Helena.”

“You don’t deserve,” her voice is at first muffled but she stands straight, “to be a part of my misery.”

I hush her. I kiss her. She kisses me, too.

“When you’re ready to come back, Helena,” I tell her in a whisper, with my forehead against hers, with my hands on her arms, “I will still be here. However you need me.”

***

At first there are phone calls at all hours of the day and night. All hours of the night because we haven’t quite got the time zones to work with our schedules.  All hours of the day because Helena wakes up in tears more than one night a week.

My phone bill is astronomical.

I don’t even fucking care.

She cares a little more than I do.

We text more because it’s cheaper. We email because it supports everything we need to say.

I learn everything about her. I tell her everything about me.

She meets my family at Thanksgiving over the maiden voyage of a video phone call, a feature on both of our phones that I have never before used, never before seen the benefits of.  We are well into our 30th video call when she greets my family again over Christmas.

It’s nothing, this thing between us. We are two friends, miles apart. We don’t talk about love, no matter how often I want to. No matter how I often I think she does too.

We talk about everything but that. Even when she tells me she misses everything about me. Even when I tell her that I miss everything about her, too.

It doesn’t need to be said. We both know what it means. But we don’t talk about love or relationships.

We are just two friends, who used to be neighbors.  We are close and we are miles apart.

Until she books a one-way ticket home.

***

Some things remain secret.

Some things, Helena does not know.

Helena doesn’t know about the time Nate and I almost got into it when he showed up on my front door to talk about his ex-wife.

Helena doesn’t know that I sold my house. That I moved away from that place and that man. That I gave up all of those awful memories, that I gave up that one night of good memories, too, for a loft downtown.

Helena doesn’t know that I made room for her to stay, if she wants to stay. Beyond the time she’s set aside for finding her own place.

Helena doesn’t know that I got a dog. That I named her Whiskey. That her middle name is Lemon. That it is the sweetest thing in the world when she lays down on my feet.

Helena doesn’t know that Abigail tried to come back and failed and when she asked, I told her, before I ever even thought about why, “I’m in love with Helena.”

Helena doesn’t know that either.

Abigail, when I tell her, says she hopes I’m not trying to keep it a secret because Helena will find out the second she sees me again.  

***

Helena knows, the second she sees me again.  We have not even left the airport and she knows.

“Why did I wait so long,” she asks, “to come back to you?”

“To be sure it wasn’t the whiskey talking?”

She smiles that smile with a hint of suspicion but she is amused. She is happy for now.

“Speaking of Whiskey. When did you get a dog?”

***

“There is no one else I would rather spend this day with than you.”

Today is different. Today is not quite as happy. It is not quite sad. Helena tells me before this day even arrives, “I don’t know how it’s going to be,” she says also, “I don’t know how I’m going to feel.”

She is already anxious. She has been anxious for weeks, before she even came home. She has been anxious for months, before she ever knew she wanted to return.

“However you feel,” I tell her when she is in my arms, when we are in my home, with Whiskey laying across our feet just beside the couch, “I’ll be here.  We’ll be together.”

She nuzzles closer, she closes her eyes, she sighs and relaxes into my hold.  

“Thank you.”

She is falling asleep. She is nearly asleep when she then says, “I love you.”

It is the first of many.  

She is wide awake when she says it now.  When I tell her, “I love you, too.”

It is warm, the sun is out. There is not even a hint of a breeze in this summer sky.

“She was taking swimming lessons,” Helena laughs softly. Incredulously. Her eyes never leave the ground where her young daughter rests peacefully below it. “It feels foolish now, to think I was so worried about her drowning.”

That laugh turns swiftly into a cry. That woman turns quickly into my arms and I wrap myself tight around her.  Hold her closer. Press a kiss into her hair.

“That’s all I can give today,” she cries. “That’s all I have.”

“Okay,” I whisper into her ear.  "Let’s go home.“

We leave her favorite flowers. We tell her we’ll see her soon.

We say happy birthday to Christina just one more time before we go.

***

She used to be so filled with grief, whoever she was back then. I would see her on occasion, without her daughter in her arms, vacant expression upon her face.  She used to be so unhappy, if her wandering and glistening eyes were any indication.

Now I come home to her, wrap her up in my arms.  We both wish I could wrap her daughter up in my arms, too.

I remember the laughter from that little one, bubbling up and out, loud and infectious. I remember that little one’s laugh as though she’d grown up laughing at my own jokes because that’s just how close our houses had always been. That’s how far away they never really were from me.

An arm’s reach. A tragic night. One lonely grieving mother’s light tapping on my front door.

I still hear that laughter echoing in through our windows. All throughout our home.  That laughter is haunting.

The grief that sometimes sets in, that takes hold of that laughter’s mother, suffocating and determined, painful and restless? It is haunting, too.

But that smile she smiles, big and wide, proud and unrelenting, happy enough, and full of love?

It is the most haunting of all.

When I close my eyes, and when I open them again every morning, that smile is the only thing that I see.


End file.
